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A low, bellowing train horn haunts the daily routine of Camanche, Iowa. It’s there in the morning when diners shuffle into Spring Garden Family Restaurant, the only place open for breakfast. They sit at a two-top counter while local news plays on a muted television and pounds of soon-to-be crispy hash browns kiss the griddle.
In the afternoon, Alice Srp sits in her dining room and looks at the Mississippi River. She is talking about the train derailment that happened earlier this year in East Palestine, Ohio, when the horn blares again, stopping the conversation.
“That situation in Ohio was so sad,” Srp said. “You feel for those people, but your heart is thinking, ‘Are we going to be [next]?’”
Alice Srp sits on the porch of her home in Camanche, Iowa. She said trains have become increasingly filled with hazardous oil and chemicals, and she worries about future disasters along the Mississippi River. Grist / John McCracken
A large sign welcomes visitors to Camanche, Iowa. The town, located on the banks of the Mississippi River, is one of the many railroad communities increasingly worried about potential train disasters involving toxic chemicals. Grist / John McCracken
Later that evening, the horn cuts through the noise at the Poor House Tap at the edge of town. As the train roars by, its resonance is dulled a bit by the chatter of patrons and the barks of Zoe, a labradoodle who knows there are treats behind the bar. She is unmoved as the sound cuts through town, grabbing the attention of locals.
Camanche, located on the banks of the Mississippi River three hours east of Des Moines, is no stranger to the sound of trains. But for some people in this town of 4,500, the familiar sounds of a train whistle now bring an unfamiliar reaction: fear.
After a train derailed in East Palestine in February — resulting in a towering black plume of smoke, the burning of toxic chemicals, and the evacuation of the town — health concerns still linger, and cleanup woes have plagued the rural community.
In the months since, residents in railroad communities across the country have become increasingly worried about the potential disaster aboard trains. Camanche has become a hotbed of concern over an international railroad merger projected to triple the number of trains moving through town.
Canadian Pacific Railroad, a major rail company headquartered in the province of Alberta, officially purchased Kansas City Southern Railroad in April. The merger, estimated to cost Canada Pacific $31 billion, is the first merger of major railroad companies in two decades.
With this new merger comes a first-of-its-kind rail line connecting Canada, the United States, and Mexico. This route will also directly link Canadian tar sands oil to Gulf Coast refineries, with increased traffic along the way.
Crude oil could be shipped from Canada to Texas and Mexico, refined into petrochemicals on the Gulf Coast, then shipped across the country to its destination.
Camanche currently sees around eight trains a day. After the merger traffic picks up, the city is expected to see upward of 21 trains a day. Other cities along the merger route will see a similar increase, raising the odds of another disaster like the one that struck East Palestine. What separates Camanche is the unique way that railroad tracks isolate residents, creating particularly frightening possibilities for the town.
Standing in Kitt Swanson’s driveway, the first thing you notice is how close the home is to the tracks. She said the trains don’t seem to bother Kiyiyah, her docile Alaskan malamute, but the rails are a few feet from her backyard and shake the house each time a train passes.
Swanson, who has lived in the home for three years, said she worries she and the roughly 1,000 people on the river side of the tracks are without help when trains pass through. When a train comes through town, the only way out for her and others on this side of the tracks is by boat.
“I’m a brittle Type 1 diabetic,” Swanson said. “If I need EMS care, how am I going to get it when all the tracks are blocked?”
Here lies the problem with the expected increase in rail traffic. When a train comes through Camanche, all seven of the crossings are blocked at the same time. This creates a steel wall, isolating more than 1,000 residents from the rest of the town. The only way out is by boat or to wait for the train to pass.
The merger, combined with the fact that freight companies have increased the length of their trains in recent years, means that these residents may be in more danger than ever of being cut off from help, should disaster strike.
According to a report from the Government Accountability Office, train lengths have increased 25 percent from 2008 to 2019, with trains averaging at least 1.4 miles long. The same report found that some rail companies operate three-mile-long trains every week.
“Our biggest concern is simply that we don’t want people to be isolated from emergency services,” said Dave Schutte, the fire chief of Camanche.
Emergency services are in a bind when trains come through town. Schutte said he’s seen the trains block the tracks for over 10 minutes, which, under the right circumstances, could be life or death for some.
He said the city voiced its concerns to both the rail companies and the Surface Transportation Board, or STB, the federal agency in charge of regulation of rail and other modes of transportation. He said it was a long shot going into the discussions that something would change given the power that the rail businesses have.
“They only looked at super busy crossings in big cities where they have high traffic,” Schutte said. “To me, [being a small town] doesn’t devalue the importance of having those crossings open when they need emergency services.”
Now that the merger has been approved, Schutte said he’s focused on emergency preparedness in case of future derailments or blocked crossings. Right now, the city is developing a plan to evacuate residents via boat if a derailment blocks access to residents during an emergency.
This method has been internally described as the Dunkirk Method, a reference to the World War II evacuation of more than 300,000 British and French soldiers by boat.
In addition to potential emergency response delays, Schutte is also worried about the risks of what’s being carried on the trains, given the disaster in Ohio earlier this year.
“Just seeing what could happen to the community, and the devastation of just how bad it really could be depending on what chemicals are on the train, certainly elevates that concern even more,” Schutte said.
Ashley Foley, a mother of three who works from home, said the regular movement of chemicals and oil on rails is a concern that keeps her up at night, worrying about the safety of her family.
“If a train is going slow and it derails, it’s still scary, but the likelihood of us surviving would be higher,” Foley said. “Now with the stuff that they’re carrying, with trains going faster and being longer, I lay in bed at night and I wonder if tonight’s gonna be the night that it comes off the tracks and wipes out the backside of the house.”
While visiting Camanche, Grist observed a train car with at least eight oil tankers moving through the town after 9 p.m.
Before 38 train cars derailed in Ohio earlier this year, vinyl chloride was a little-known chemical. Now, national media attention has raised awareness of what’s being carried on the trains that move through the nation’s rural backyards.
According to the Federal Railroad Administration, or FRA, and the Association of American Railroads, there are more than 140,000 miles of railway in the U.S., the majority of which are in rural regions.
Oil is transported predominantly by pipeline. But oil capacity in pipelines is dwindling, with rail emerging as a popular means of moving crude oil. Between 2010 and 2014, oil by rail topped almost 1 million barrels a day, which represented 10 percent of American crude oil at the time.
At the time, questions over the safety of transporting oil by rail were in the spotlight after a disaster in Canada. In the early hours of July 6, 2013, an oil train jumped the tracks in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec, and derailed, killing 47 people and leveling the area’s downtown, which has yet to recover.
Now that Canadian shale oil will have a direct path through the United States, concerns over oil explosions caused by train derailments have been rekindled. And though global oil demand is poised to slow, fossil fuel companies are pivoting to a similarly toxic industry.
Petrochemicals are manufactured from fossil fuels and used in a variety of industries, from plastics to fertilizers. In the past decade, fossil fuel companies have raced to build out their plastics divisions, refining oil into petrochemicals along the Gulf Coast and polluting the predominantly Black communities around them.
Global plastic production is estimated to quadruple by 2050, and with it, the risk of transporting volatile chemicals. Vinyl chloride, the now-infamous chemical that escaped from toppled train cars in East Palestine, is a petrochemical and known carcinogen.
The rail industry knows this, and train executives are betting on the continued growth of the petrochemical and plastics markets.
Speaking at an investors’ earnings call in October 2022, Canadian Pacific Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer John Brooks said the rail company is starting to see petrochemicals shipped out of the Heartland Petrochemical Complex in Alberta, Canada. This newly built petrochemical facility is owned by Canadian energy company Inter Pipeline. Canadian Pacific is the only rail company it uses.
“Our partnership with Inter Pipeline expands Canadian Pacific’s plastic service to both export and domestic markets, and this volume growth will be a tailwind for us,” Brooks said.
When asked to comment, Canadian Pacific referred Grist to its STB merger application.
While oil and rail are betting on the petrochemical markets, environmental groups are working to prevent their expansion.
“We just don’t need it,” said Eric de Place, former director of the advocacy organization Beyond Petrochemicals. “They want to triple global plastics consumption, and we already have too much plastic.”
De Place said the pollution and public health dangers seen in East Palestine, Ohio, happen almost every day for communities around the country that reside near petrochemical facilities, just without the spectacle of a massive smoke cloud.
“The derailment in Ohio was horrifying, but in some way, it’s just a moving version of what happens in stationary locations all the time,” he said.
Heading west on Iowa Route 30 to Camanche, the Mississippi River is only visible through split-second cracks in the industrial corridor walling off the nation’s second-longest river.
Along the way, a massive corn mill owned by Chicago-based Archer-Daniels-Midland Company, or ADM, stretches for miles along the river. ADM is a leader in agriculture and food processing, making a variety of products, including corn oils, enzymes, and ethanol.
On an early Saturday morning in mid-May, roughly 80 oil tanker cars could be seen sitting along the tracks at the ADM facility. Their destination, and contents, were unknown. (ADM did not respond to a request for comment.) Some of these cars included rail placards that notate that hazardous materials are onboard, a practice created by the U.S. Department of Transportation and used to determine risk in emergency response situations.
Camanche, like many cities along the banks of the Mississippi, became a solidified community in the mid-19th century, relying on a commercial corridor sculptured by rails and barges to haul timber, clams, pork, and grain across the country.
Since the first tracks split through the city in 1857, the contents of trains have changed drastically. Alice Srp, who lives by the Mississippi River and has lived in Camanche for over 55 years, said she’s seen this shift in her lifetime.
“Rather than cargo containers and [lumber], these are round oil tankers,” Srp said.
Srp said the merger will make emergency response harder for the older population who live on the river side of the tracks. She also worries that, even if a future derailment isn’t fatal, an oil spill could become an ecological nightmare for the region, given that the tracks run parallel to the river.
In May, the dividing line between train tracks and the Mississippi blurred. Camanche saw its third-highest river levels in history, and parts of the tracks in town were underwater. Findings from the U.S. Department of Transportation and global research point to increased hazards and damages to railroads due to climate-fueled flooding.
While rail and water commerce compete for cargo, they often go hand in hand when it comes to location. According to Railfan & Railroad Magazine, railroads are historically built next to rivers to decrease grading and curves along a train’s route, and many routes across the country often followed the “natural courses of water.”
The relationship between railroad corridors and rivers is likely to get more turbulent as flooding becomes more frequent due to a warming climate. In late April, a train derailed in Western Wisconsin along the Mississippi River during heavy rain, dumping train cars into the river.
Despite ongoing concerns about the impact of increased rail traffic on the Mississippi River, the Canadian Pacific and Kansas City rail merger continued. In its final environmental impact statement, the Office of Environmental Analysis for the STB wrote that the negative impacts of the merger would be “negligible, minor, and/or temporary.”
The office also found that the merger would increase the transportation of hazardous material on more than 5,800 miles of rail lines through 16 states, including Iowa, Illinois, and Ohio.
“You feel like you’re just run over and it doesn’t matter,” Srp said.
Residents in Camanche aren’t alone in their opposition to the merger.
Eight communities from Chicago suburbs formed the Coalition to Stop CPKC to oppose the merger. Chicago’s freight industry is the largest in the country and, according to the coalition, the merger will increase traffic by 300 percent in the next three years.
Despite the deal’s federal approval, these suburban communities are pushing back. On May 11, the Coalition to Stop CPKC filed an appeal to prevent the merger, citing a need to review the public safety and environmental impacts.
“The (Surface Transportation Board) ruling shows us three things,” said Jeff Pruyn, the mayor of Itasca, Illinois, a community two hours east of Camanche. “It ignored our concerns for the quality of life in our communities, it ignored our concerns about the negative consequences on economic development in our communities, and most importantly, it ignored our concerns for safety.”
When reached, the STB declined to comment for this story, citing the pending appeal litigation.
In Bensenville, Illinois, another community opposing the merger, the presence of the transportation sector divides the town. On one side, there are quaint bungalows, old-fashioned street lights, and a downtown with cobblestone streets and a commuter train station.
On the other side of Bensenville, a village of more than 18,000, sit two massive transportation facilities: Chicago O’Hare International Airport and the Bensenville Yard, a massive rail terminal. According to the Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning, 50 percent of all freight trains in the country pass through Chicago’s varied rail corridors and terminals.
This terminal already sees a variety of cargo, including hazardous materials. On a Saturday morning in mid-May, a train of an estimated 150 cars made its way through Bensenville, headed to the terminal. Grist observed roughly nine train cars marked with a hazard placard for the industrial chemical styrene monomer, an explosive “probable human carcinogen” used to make rubber and other plastics.
There were also 11 train cars marked with a hazard placard for “Not Otherwise Specified” hazardous materials and at least 12 oil tankers with no visible hazard placard.
Safety is not only a concern for the cities and towns seeing increased rail traffic, but also for those working the rails. In the immediate aftermath of the Ohio derailment, the working conditions of railroaders were called into question.
Mark Burrows, a retired railroad engineer from Chicago, said the rail industry has been stretched thin and lacks adequate protection for workers. It suffered a blow to worker protections when President Biden signed a bill blocking a national rail strike last year. Rail, fossil fuel, and petrochemical companies celebrated the strike’s defeat.
Burrows said he’s seen the industry become increasingly consolidated, hurting the well-being of workers. He retired in 2015 after roughly four decades.
He said he saw an increase in oil tankers in his last years of working in the Chicago area and the Bensenville yard. It is possible that workers are more aware of the hazards they deal with daily, he said, but the “draconic and barbaric” working schedules and conditions have them operating at maximum capacity at all times, to avoid being penalized or worse.
“What we now know as Precision Scheduled Railroading just obliterates our normal working agreements,” said Burrows, a member of Railroad Workers United. “And it caused a speedup, having these guys work like maniacs.”
“Precision Scheduled Railroading” is a type of rail traffic management that focuses on increasing efficiency by reducing staff and lengthening trains.
For Burrows, derailments and poor working conditions are symptoms of the industry’s efforts to maximize profits.
He said that establishing better working conditions for staff, creating a nationalized railroad system, and reforming how hazardous materials are classified and transported could all prevent future disasters on the tracks.
“If you ask me what’s the definition of a hazardous train: If it is just one damn car of ammonia, or chlorine, or anything that’s uber hazardous, then that should be considered a hazardous train,” Burrows said. “Because all it takes is for one car to open up.”
About 1,000 miles west of Camanche, the sound of train horns worries Ingrid Wussow.
“I think we are at the precipice of a lot of devastating things if we don’t start making decisions that put our environment first,” she said.
Wussow, the newly elected mayor of Glenwood Springs, Colorado, has joined other surrounding municipalities in a push against expanding oil trains directly through her downtown.
A planned 88-mile railway expansion would connect the oil-rich Uinta Basin in Utah to Union Pacific rail lines, linking Western oil to Gulf Coast refineries.
While the new railway has been on the table since 2014, Wussow said that concerns over the shipment of hazards like oil have been renewed in recent months.
The increase in oil drilling and an expanded fossil fuel market flies in the face of global climate goals. This burning of fossil fuels will continue to exacerbate the climate crisis, resulting in extreme weather events such as flooding and mudslides.
Besides a potentially deadly derailment and oil train explosion in Glenwood Springs’ downtown district, Wussow shares the same concern as other environmental groups and municipal leaders in the region: increased oil by rail along the Colorado River. The expansion is estimated to ship 4.6 billion gallons of waxy crude oil per year through Colorado, a hundred miles of which would run right beside the river.
The Colorado River is the source of drinking water for roughly 40 million people and is currently experiencing a historic drought. Wussow said the river is the “lifeblood” of the region, drawing tourists and recreation throughout the year.
Wussow added that many residents would be put in danger by increased oil train traffic moving full speed through railroad towns. She said communities have already seen the risk posed by increased hazards on rail lines moving through their towns.
“East Palestine, Ohio, is an example of how damaging and concerning these derailments are,” she said.
In Camanche, the dangers of rail contents and the obstacles they pose to public safety aren’t lost on city administrator Andrew Kida, who doesn’t mince words when looking back on negotiations with Canadian Pacific.
“Canadian Pacific doesn’t give one rat’s behind about people,” Kida told Grist.
As part of the merger negotiations, the city of Camanche was offered, and its council eventually turned down, over $200,000 per railroad crossing to shut down up to three crossings. This would permanently close the sections of the road that intersect with the tracks. Camanche counter offered with $2.5 million and the railroad company declined. Larger cities accepted offers in the millions of dollars to shut down crossings.
Kida told Grist that he is now working on using Iowa state law to force the railroad companies to pay for infrastructure that would allow for better access for emergency response.
Kida said he would have preferred the oil that is now moving through his town be sent from Canada by pipeline, as a shale oil derailment in the nearby Mississippi River marshland would “make cleaning up the Exxon Valdez look like child’s play.”
“All they’ve done is taken the Keystone pipeline and put it on wheels and run it right next to the Mississippi River,” he said.
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Railroaded on Jul 12, 2023.
Over the past century, the fossil fuel industry has made a habit of letting others clean up their messes. Today, the U.S. is dotted with millions of “orphaned wells,” crevices in the earth that companies once used to extract oil and subsequently abandoned once they were no longer considered profitable. But additional help appears to be on the way: This week, the Biden administration announced it would make nearly $660 million in funds from the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law available to states to plug more of these polluting fissures.
“These investments are good for our climate, for the health of our communities, and for American workers,” said Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland in a press release on Monday. “With this additional funding, states will put more people to work to clean up these toxic sites, reduce methane emissions and safeguard our environment.”
Unless they are plugged — filled with concrete and stripped of unused equipment — abandoned oil wells can seep hazardous compounds into their surroundings. A growing body of research has shown that orphaned oil wells are a major source of planet-warming emissions, since the steel and concrete walls that reinforce them are prone to cracking over time and releasing methane, a potent greenhouse gas. A 2020 Reuters investigation found that in 2018, orphaned wells emitted an estimated 280,000 tons of methane into the atmosphere, roughly the equivalent of the emissions from the total amount of oil that the U.S. uses on a typical day.
Legally, companies are required to plug their wells after they finish extracting fuel, but regulators have long struggled with enforcement. Part of the challenge is financial: It costs an average of $20,000 to seal a single well, and many companies file for bankruptcy before following through. As a result, experts estimate that there are 2 to 3 million abandoned oil wells across the country, with the majority concentrated in oil-and-gas producing states such as Texas and Pennsylvania.
The Department of the Interior said that the new funding is part of its goal to advance environmental justice, a term that refers to the disproportionate pollution borne by low-income people and communities of color across the country. Numerous studies have demonstrated that past practices like redlining — in which financial services such as loans and insurance were systematically denied to people in certain neighborhoods of color — have concentrated oil and gas wells in majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in places like Los Angeles.
The hazards of living near abandoned wells go beyond their contribution to climate change. Orphaned wells are a public health threat since they can emit dangerous chemicals like benzene and toluene, which have been linked to conditions such as blood cancer and liver disease. In rare cases, they can leak methane into nearby buildings, allowing the gas to build up to dangerous levels.
This week’s announcement marks the second major round of funds from the bipartisan infrastructure law to plug orphaned wells. States used the first set of funds, which was announced last August, to plug approximately 3,000 wells. Officials have until the end of the year to apply for this new round of grants, which range from $1 million to $80 million, depending on the number of wells in the state.
“At the end of the day, it’s a lot of money, but it’s nowhere near enough,” Josh Axelrod, a senior policy advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, told Grist. “The big question is whether the federal government should really be in the business of cleaning this up since technically, the industry was supposed to be on the hook for these wells over the years.”
This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Biden administration announces $660 million to plug abandoned wells on Jul 12, 2023.
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A new study by scientists from the National University of Singapore (NUS), Durham University and Princeton University asserts that bolstering the protections of current conservation areas is as important for keeping biodiversity intact as establishing new protected areas, a press release from Durham University said.
The researchers found that, of the approximately 5,000 species studied, about 70 percent of them are either completely unrepresented in protected areas; are found in protected areas that have been downsized, downgraded or have lost their official status — known as PADDD events; or would be particularly at risk of extinction if land use were to shift in the future.
However, the team found that, by strengthening the protections that already exist in conservation areas, and enlarging current park networks across one percent of the land on Earth, crucial habitats for 1,191 wildlife species that are at a heightened risk of extinction can be protected.
“We looked at ~5000 species of terrestrial vertebrates and mapped out where their suitable habitats occur across the world. We find that of these species, 1463 species have less than 10% of their habitats currently in protected areas (which we feel is insufficient representation in protected areas), 2308 species have at least 100 hectares of their habitats falling within parks with documented PADDD events (which means some or all of their nominally protected habitat is not actually being protected), and 407 species have not been affected by PADDD events but are reliant on parks that might experience increased land use change in the future (that is, they occur in parks that are likely to experience degradation in the future),” lead author of the study Dr. Yiwen Zeng of NUS told EcoWatch in an email.
The study, “Gaps and weaknesses in the global protected area network for safeguarding at-risk species,” was published in the journal Science Advances.
When a government decides to take away some of the legal protections for a park and it is downgraded, downsized or “degazetted,” it can become more vulnerable to potentially damaging human activities. These can include mining, forest clearing for the expansion of infrastructure and other destructive actions.
“A majority of PADDD events globally are linked to industrial-scale resource extraction or development. In some cases, PADDD events are not necessarily harmful to biodiversity — for example, when countries restore land rights to displaced Indigenous people by giving them control over protected areas. But certainly in those cases where a protected area is downgraded in status or degazetted in order to make way for logging, mining, and other harmful extractive activities, biodiversity will be harmed,” Zeng told EcoWatch.
The study found that PADDD events have occurred on more than 687 million acres of parks as of 2021.
One example is the habitat of Cambodia’s critically endangered frog Megophrys damrei. The protected habitat sits within a national park, but is experiencing ongoing habitat loss and degradation.
“Unfortunately, across the world, nations are not doing an adequate job of protecting their parks, which leaves those special places open to habitat destruction. And in many cases, countries are downgrading the protected status they have given to parks. So, as a result, lots of sensitive species suffer,” Zeng told EcoWatch.
The researchers found that if another 127 square miles of wild spaces in Indonesia were given protection, suitable habitats for 53 additional species that currently have limited, unprotected habitat could be preserved, the press release said.
The critically endangered songbird Sangihe golden bulbul is found in just one place on Earth: Sangihe Island in Indonesia. The entire population is estimated to be from 50 to 230 individuals living in one unprotected area. There have not been any of the birds documented on plantations, which suggests it only thrives in intact forests, meaning enhanced conservation would benefit the species.
“There are many wonderful examples in conservation of people fighting to protect species, but there is always a risk that when you take your eye off the ball, pressure builds, and hard-won protection is lost,” said Dr. Rebecca Senior of Durham University in the press release. “Designating parks on paper is not enough; they need to be in the right places, with the right management, and they need to last.”
It is a make or break time in human history to create and preserve protected areas in order to safeguard the world’s biodiversity.
“This study establishes a geography of arks: Where new parks can be created, and where to restore and reinforce existing parks, to boost wildlife conservation,” Zeng said in the press release. “Many global discussions on conservation rightfully center around the need to create new protected areas. These include discussions at the COP15 United Nations biodiversity conference in December 2022, where a target to protect 30% of the planet’s lands and seas was adopted. But our study also shows the importance of ensuring that protected areas remain effective at keeping out harmful human activity.”
So how would the expansion of park networks across only one percent of Earth’s land mass lead to the protection of essential habitats for nearly 1,200 species that are at risk of extinction?
“This can be achieved if the expansion and strengthening of park networks is done in key locations. These are locations that target places where the largest number of potentially vulnerable species occur. Note, however, that we are absolutely not saying that the world’s protected areas should be expanded by only 1%. For many reasons, we are big supporters of the 30×30 idea,” Zeng told EcoWatch.
What parts of the world contain the most potentially effective conservation areas that are not yet protected in terms of number of species?
“There are critical areas for biodiversity around the world that need protection. It’s not as though one continent or one country holds all or most of these places. Having said that, though, we can single out a few nations that can greatly contribute to saving the world’s biodiversity by protecting key places. These include Madagascar, Malaysia and Peru just to name a few examples,” Zeng said.
There are actions individuals can take to help strengthen the protection of existing parks, Zeng told EcoWatch.
“People need to let their political leaders know that they care about biodiversity and want to see more wild places protected to save species, sustain healthy ecosystems, and provide opportunities for people to connect with nature. And, of course, they can show their support for parks by visiting them and enjoying all they have to offer, just so long as they do so in accordance with park rules,” Zeng told EcoWatch.
Zeng emphasized that the bottom line is that effectively managed parks are essential to the planet’s biodiversity.
“There [have] been a lot of promising developments with the signing and adoption of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. This gives us a target and guide towards increasing biodiversity conservation efforts worldwide, but of course this needs to be backed up by action and proper financing as well. What is clear, though, is that parks need to be protected, and if they are not, they will be damaged or destroyed, and biodiversity will suffer,” Zeng said.
The post ‘A Geography of Arks’: Extending Park Networks Across 1% of Earth Could Save More Than 1,000 at-Risk Species appeared first on EcoWatch.
Plastics are everywhere. They’re used to make food packaging, bags, water bottles and for many other common applications. As they break down, their tiny particles — known as microplastics — end up in the ocean, on the highest mountaintops, in our lungs and in our blood.
The problem with plastics is that they stay in the environment for years, posing hazards for humans, animals and the environment. But what if there were a different kind of plastic that would biodegrade in your backyard compost bin about as quickly as a banana peel?
A group of researchers led by scientists at the University of Washington have come up with new bioplastics that biodegrade naturally and relatively quickly — unlike traditional plastics, which do not biodegrade, or other types of bioplastics, which need to be processed in commercial facilities in order to biodegrade — and they’re made from the cells of the blue-green cyanobacteria known as spirulina.
“We were motivated to create bioplastics that are both bio-derived and biodegradable in our backyards, while also being processable, scalable and recyclable,” said senior author of the study Eleftheria Roumeli, a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering, in a press release from the University of Washington. “The bioplastics we have developed, using only spirulina, not only have a degradation profile similar to organic waste, but also are on average 10 times stronger and stiffer than previously reported spirulina bioplastics. These properties open up new possibilities for the practical application of spirulina-based plastics in various industries, including disposable food packaging or household plastics, such as bottles or trays.”
For the study, the researchers formed spirulina powder into a multitude of shapes using heat and pressure, which is the same way conventional plastics are processed and created. The mechanical properties of the spirulina plastics are similar to single-use plastics derived from petroleum.
The study, “Fabricating Strong and Stiff Bioplastics from Whole Spirulina Cells,” was published in the journal Advanced Functional Materials.
The scientists chose spirulina for their bioplastics because it is already being used for cosmetics and foods and can be cultivated on a large scale. As they grow, spirulina cells also sequester carbon dioxide, which means as a raw material for plastics spirulina is not only carbon neutral, but has the potential to be carbon negative.
“Spirulina also has unique fire-resistant properties,” said lead author of the study Hareesh Iyer, a UW materials science and engineering doctoral student, in the press release. “When exposed to fire, it instantly self-extinguishes, unlike many traditional plastics that either combust or melt. This fire-resistant characteristic makes spirulina-based plastics advantageous for applications where traditional plastics may not be suitable due to their flammability. One example could be plastic racks in data centers because the systems that are used to keep the servers cool can get very hot.”
Because the research team used a similar processing approach as traditional plastics with their bioplastics, large-scale manufacturing of the spirulina-based materials would be easier.
“This means that we would not have to redesign manufacturing lines from scratch if we wanted to use our materials at industrial scales,” Roumeli said. “We’ve removed one of the common barriers between the lab and scaling up to meet industrial demand. For example, many bioplastics are made from molecules that are extracted from biomass, such as seaweed, and mixed with performance modifiers before being cast into films. This process requires the materials to be in the form of a solution prior to casting, and this is not scalable.”
Making bioplastics out of spirulina has been done before, but the bioplastics the UW-led research team came up with are stiffer and stronger. They are also recyclable. The researchers changed processing conditions like time, pressure and temperature to improve the bonding and microstructure within the bioplastics, studying their stiffness, toughness and strength along the way.
The plastics still have some hurdles before they will be ready for industrial use, like being sensitive to water and somewhat brittle.
“You wouldn’t want these materials to get rained on,” Iyer said in the press release.
The researchers are still examining the bioplastics’ fundamental principles, and hope to create an assortment of bioplastics for various uses, similar to petroleum-based plastics.
“Biodegradation is not our preferred end-of-life scenario,” Roumeli said. “Our spirulina bioplastics are recyclable through mechanical recycling, which is very accessible. People don’t often recycle plastics, however, so it’s an added bonus that our bioplastics do degrade quickly in the environment.”
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One of the world’s busiest airports, Los Angeles International (known by its airport code LAX) has banned sales of single-use plastic water bottles.
On June 30, LAX officials shared on Facebook that a ban on single-use plastic bottle sales in the airport would take place immediately. Officials recommend that visitors bring reusable alternatives and use the water bottle refill stations located in the various terminals.
The ban follows a previous policy, adopted in 2021, to phase out single-use water bottles and reduce plastic waste at Los Angeles World Airports (LAWA), which includes LAX and Van Nuys Airports. The policy is part of LAWA’s Sustainability Action Plan (SAP), which includes targeting a zero-waste future.
“Eliminating single-use plastic water bottles is the right thing to do for our airports, our communities and our environment,” said Justin Erbacci, CEO of LAWA, as reported by KTLA.
According to Erbacci, the LAWA Board of Airport Commissioners plan to make the airports zero waste by 2045.
LAWA reported in its single-use plastics water bottle phase-out policy that more than 9 million plastic water bottles were sold at LAX in 2019 alone, averaging more than 24,000 bottles each day.
“Moving away from single-use plastic water bottles and towards reusables reduces plastic waste and pollution to help passengers reduce their environmental impact while traveling,” LAWA officials said in the policy document.
The ban of plastic water bottle sales includes vending machines and events happening at the airport. The ban does not extend to other bottled drinks outside of water, nor does it impact bottled water from flight services on aircrafts. Water will still be available in single-use cartons, glass bottles and recyclable aluminum bottles.
LAX is the second airport in the world to enact a ban on plastic water bottle sales, following San Francisco International Airport (SFO) which banned plastic water bottles in 2019. In 2021, SFO’s policy extended to include other types of beverages as well.
The ban is one part of LAWA’s sustainability plan, which also includes net-zero carbon emissions from LAWA operations by 2045, 100% renewable electricity use by 2045 and no drinking water used for non-potable purposes.
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